The Reapers - A basketball team sponsored by AceBoy Sports Group

Hey everyone!

I hope you enjoyed the very first post from Learning the Venture last week! This week’s post is going to be a little different and much closer to home, and will focus on my company AceBoy Sports Group. I started ABSG in my dorm room during my junior year of university in 2017, and since then I have incorporated it and grown it into an aspiring sports management company, now based in Bermuda. To date, we represent two young Bermudian national team players currently playing abroad in England (more on them coming soon), have hosted (and will continue to host) Bermuda’s first ever outdoor 1v1 basketball tournament, and most recently have begun sponsoring amateur teams in Bermuda’s various sports leagues.

Our first foray into sponsorship began in late 2021, when the 2021/22 season of the Bermuda Basketball League kicked off for the first time since 2019. I had always played in the league when I came home for summer break from university, but had never actually been able to have my own team. Basketball in Bermuda is popular within its own community and in my opinion could be more widely enjoyed, but egos, insufficient youth development opportunities, and a general lack of direction has plagued the league and Bermuda Basketball Association for years.

With a new board in place for the 2021/22 season and beyond, I put my name forward to become a ‘team rep’ for the league. With this came the responsibility to put together a team and get sponsorship for that team, if not then the players would need to pay their own registration fees. I took the opportunity to sponsor the team myself, and thus the ABSG Reapers were born. Assembling the team was simple; I reached out to a bunch of my friends who I grew up playing basketball with and were teammates of mine on various youth national teams.

ABSG Reapers 2021/22 Roster:

• #1 - Jason Gonsalves - G/F (C)

• #3 - Mykal Glasgow - G/F

• #8 - Jorel Smith - G

• #15 - Keishun Swan - F

• #21 - Aidan Cassidy - G

• #23 - Jaydon Springer - F/C

• #24 - Gerhson Kurt - F

• #32 - Schyler Smith - F

• #33 - Raushon Tankard - G

• #41 - Jericho Tucker - F

So why sponsorship?

I know it isn’t necessarily common for sports management companies who’s prime focus is athlete representation and event management to sponsor local sports teams, but I don’t want ABSG to be seen as conventional. While sport is very much a part of Bermudian culture, the decision makers are of an older generation and the methods and processes that are used aren’t what I or many professionals in the industry outside of Bermuda would call modern. At the moment, ABSG is one of a handful of sports management companies in Bermuda, let alone one that is currently active, so it was important for me to find a way to legitimately get involved in a local league for solid brand exposure.

The very first revenue generating operation from ABSG was ‘Battle on the Blacktop’ - a 1 versus 1 outdoor basketball tournament that took place in the summer of 2017. We then hosted the second edition in the summer of 2018 and unfortunately have been held back by COVID-19 restrictions for the third edition (we are aiming for a 2022 Christmas edition for the third installment) - you can watch the highlights from both editions on our YouTube channel. While we have more plans for integrating ABSG fully into the basketball landscape, sponsoring a team in the BBA league w

as the next step in helping to solidify ourselves not only within basketball, but also in the wider sports industry in Bermuda.

OK, so why basketball then?

Basketball was always my sport growing up; I was a member of Bermuda’s Under-16, Under-18 and Under-20 national teams and was fortunate enough to be recruited to Endicott College which is NCAA Division III (#gogulls), so I always knew I wanted basketball to be a focus for ABSG. Aside from my love for the sport, I always thought basketball could be bigger than what it actually is in Bermuda if there was proper attention and care put into the existing infrastructure. Additionally, it’s just a cool sport! The game is easy to understand for the average fan watching and also relatively simple to start playing. What I think basketball has always lacked in Bermuda is energy; really just talented youth getting up and down the court and competing with each other. And that was the inspiration behind sponsoring a team a filling it with a bunch of guys who I knew just wanted to play ball.

Since basketball in Bermuda still operates within its own community, there isn’t a lot of local company investment in the sport, so there is plenty of room for a start-up like ABSG to make headway into the local basketball community. This would be a different challenge to football in Bermuda for example, with it being our national sport there is already involvement from large local and international companies that are based in Bermuda. Now that isn’t to say I wouldn’t want to be involved in a larger sport in Bermuda, I absolutely would! But the sponsorship or partnership has to make sense with benefits for both parties, rather than simply throwing money at something. Sponsoring a team allowed us to put together a group of young, talented players who just wanted to play basketball and have a great time!

What our sponsorship consisted of…

The ‘sponsorship’ itself was simply covering the cost of the registration fees for the players to play in the league. Our sponsorship of the team was split 60/40 between ABSG and the players (including myself), so essentially every player paid their own ‘player registration fee’ and ABSG covered the larger cost which was the ‘team registration fee’. While it was a small amount in the end, it allowed our logo to be featured on all BBA branding material for the league which included print and social media posts. This obviously wasn’t a huge return for sponsors, but it was still something to entice smaller local companies to get involved and support the league, and a great way for us to acclimate to being a team sponsor.

In addition to covering the team registration fee, we also supplied each member of the roster with two ABSG t-shirts which we used as our pre-game warm-up gear. We also took the opportunity to live-stream our games on Instagram through the main ABSG page (@aceboysg), which were the only games live-streamed throughout the regular season and playoffs, aside from the finals - which we were in btw…but did we win?

What we gained…

From before the start of the season, we took the opportunity to really push the team and the sponsorship over social media - something simple and obvious, but also something that the BBA has lacked in recent years. While we didn’t really get going on TikTok (we are planning a better TikTok strategy for the next league) we have always had a very strong Instagram presence, and set-up a page unique to the team to track and document results and highlights from the 2021/22 campaign. We organized a team shoot at the court where we hosted Battle on the Blacktop in back-to-back summers (pics shot by Dion Easton - give bro a follow - might be a better photographer now than hooper!)

Over the course of the season, the dedicated page @hoops.absg accumulated 78 followers - not an insane return, but given the purpose of this page was to document the team’s season and the basketball community in Bermuda is smaller compared to most sports, it is a decent starting point and something we will continue to utilize for future sponsored teams. While we weren’t active on TikTok, we were consistent with posting on Instagram, with our most popular Reel garnering over 11.5K views reaching just over 11K unique accounts. Unfortunately, Instagram only lets you look back so far on post and live insights so I don’t have that engagement data to share with you. But, I feel confident saying that our brand recognition blossomed during the season within the basketball community - a game didn’t go by without someone coming up to myself or another player on the roster to ask about ABSG, what we do, who we are, etc. so I would say that is a positive way to start our sponsorship journey!

More importantly, how did the team do?

I know, I know… all this talk about sponsoring this team and I haven’t even mentioned how well they did! Well the team couldn’t have done better, we finished with a 6-4 record, blew a couple teams out by 30+ points (so close to 50 in one match!), flooded the league with memorable highlights, our very own Gershon Kurt won the Rebounding title, and what else… oh right, we won the 2021/22 BBA League Title! All in all it was a great experience and a lot of fun for the whole team, and more importantly it was a very exciting season for all teams and fans involved.

Even though we entered the season as one of the two favorites to win, we still ended up losing to Young Goatz twice (we beat them in the season opener) who finished the season 9-1. We were also defeated by a younger team The Answers, who are extremely fun to watch who also finished 6-4; we only ended up finishing higher than them in the standings as we scored more points during the season than them. Our only other loss came against the Black Mambas, who as previously mentioned we beat in the finals.

What’s next?

While I’d like to continue sponsoring a team in the leagues that the BBA organizes, it has to be the right fit from a player perspective. I only really want to sponsor young, exciting teams filled with players who are still improving and can contribute to the future of basketball in Bermuda. With regards to other sports, there are a few avenues I am exploring with regards to sponsorship and strategic partnership, so we will see what the future holds!

I hope you enjoyed this week’s edition everyone!

Until next time!

Jason